Publications by authors named "Lucassen P"

Article Synopsis
  • Alzheimer's Disease is influenced by genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, including exercise, diet, education, and early life stress, which can affect its onset and progression.
  • Recent research has identified crucial biological processes, like stress hormones and neuroinflammation, that may link early life stress to an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's Disease.
  • Gaining insights into how early life experiences shape brain health could lead to new prevention and treatment strategies to counteract the impact of stress and reduce dementia risk.
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Many patients with fatigue do not visit a physician. In patients who do consult the general practitioner, the cause of their fatigue is explained in about a quarter: 8 percent has a somatic cause while psychosocial causes explain 16 percent. In about three quarters the cause of fatigue remains unexplained.

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Objectives: Persistent somatic symptoms (PSS) describe recurrent or continuously occurring symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, or pain that have persisted for at least several months. These include single symptoms such as chronic pain, combinations of symptoms, or functional disorders such as fibromyalgia or irritable bowel syndrome. While many studies have explored stigmatisation by healthcare professionals toward people with PSS, there is a lack of validated measurement instruments.

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Purpose: Person-centered care is foundational to good quality primary care and has positive effects on health outcomes and patient satisfaction. The Person-Centered Primary Care Measure (PCPCM) is a recently developed, patient-reported survey able to assess person-centeredness and has demonstrated strong validity and reliability. Little is known, however, about the feasibility of the PCPCM in non-English-speaking settings.

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In our ageing global population, the cognitive decline associated with dementia and neurodegenerative diseases represents a major healthcare problem. To date, there are no effective treatments for age-related cognitive impairment, thus preventative strategies are urgently required. Physical exercise is gaining traction as a non-pharmacological approach to promote brain health.

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can result in long-lasting changes in hippocampal function. The changes induced by TBI on the hippocampus contribute to cognitive deficits. The adult hippocampus harbors neural stem cells (NSCs) that generate neurons (neurogenesis), and astrocytes (astrogliogenesis).

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Stress exposure during the sensitive period of early development has been shown to program the brain and increases the risk to develop cognitive deficits later in life. We have shown earlier that early-life stress (ES) leads to cognitive decline at an adult age, associated with changes in adult hippocampal neurogenesis and neuroinflammation. In particular, ES has been shown to affect neurogenesis rate and the survival of newborn cells later in life as well as microglia, modulating their response to immune or metabolic challenges later in life.

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Hippocampal neurogenesis (HN) occurs throughout the life course and is important for memory and mood. Declining with age, HN plays a pivotal role in cognitive decline (CD), dementia, and late-life depression, such that altered HN could represent a neurobiological susceptibility to these conditions. Pertinently, dietary patterns (e.

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Objective: Persistent somatic symptoms (PSS) describe recurrent or continuously occurring symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, or pain that have persisted for at least several months. These include single symptoms such as chronic pain, combinations of symptoms, or functional disorders such as fibromyalgia or irritable bowel syndrome. While stigmatisation by healthcare professionals is regularly reported, there are limited measurement instruments demonstrating content validity.

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Middle age has historically been an understudied period of life compared to older age, when cognitive and brain health decline are most pronounced, but the scope for intervention may be limited. However, recent research suggests that middle age could mark a shift in brain aging. We review emerging evidence on multiple levels of analysis indicating that midlife is a period defined by unique central and peripheral processes that shape future cognitive trajectories and brain health.

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Background: Late-life depression is a serious mental health problem. Behavioral Activation (BA) is an effective, accessible psychotherapeutic treatment for older adults. However, little is known about which symptoms decrease and how associations between depressive symptoms change during BA treatment.

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Introduction: Depression in older adults is associated with decreased quality of life and increased utilization of healthcare services. Behavioral activation (BA) is an effective treatment for late-life depression, but the cost-effectiveness compared to treatment as usual (TAU) is unknown.

Methods: An economic evaluation was performed alongside a cluster randomized controlled multicenter trial including 161 older adults (≥65 years) with moderate to severe depressive symptoms (PHQ-9 ≥ 10).

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Background: A comprehensive picture is lacking of the impact of early childhood (age 0-5) risk factors on the subsequent development of mental health symptoms.

Objective: In this systematic review, we investigated which individual, social and urban factors, experienced in early childhood, contribute to the development of later anxiety and depression, behavioural problems, and internalising and externalising symptoms in youth.

Methods: Embase, MEDLINE, Scopus, and PsycInfo were searched on the 5 of January 2022.

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Introduction: Early-life stress (ES) increases the risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD). We and others have shown that ES aggravates amyloid-beta (Aβ) pathology and promotes cognitive dysfunction in APP/PS1 mice, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear.

Methods: We studied how ES affects the hippocampal synaptic proteome in wild-type (WT) and APP/PS1 mice at early and late pathological stages, and validated hits using electron microscopy and immunofluorescence.

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Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective therapy for depression, but its cellular effects on the human brain remain elusive. In rodents, electroconvulsive shocks increase proliferation and the expression of plasticity markers in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG), suggesting increased neurogenesis. Furthermore, MRI studies in depressed patients have demonstrated increases in DG volume after ECT, that were notably paralleled by a decrease in depressive mood scores.

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Background: Exposure to stress early in life increases the susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology in aged AD mouse models. So far, the underlying mechanisms have remained elusive.

Objective: To investigate 1) effects of early life stress (ELS) on early functional signs that precede the advanced neuropathological changes, and 2) correlate synaptosomal protein content with cognition to identify neural correlates of AD.

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Early postnatal life is a sensitive period of development that shapes brain structure and function later in life. Exposure to stress during this critical time window can alter brain development and may enhance the susceptibility to psychopathology and neurodegenerative disorders later in life. The developmental effects of early life stress (ELS) on synaptic function are not fully understood, but could provide mechanistic insights into how ELS modifies later brain function and disease risk.

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Scope: Evidence on the Mediterranean diet (MD) and age-related cognitive decline (CD) is still inconclusive partly due to self-reported dietary assessment. The aim of the current study is to develop an MD- metabolomic score (MDMS) and investigate its association with CD in community-dwelling older adults.

Methods And Results: This study includes participants from the Three-City Study from the Bordeaux (n = 418) and Dijon (n = 422) cohorts who are free of dementia at baseline.

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Background: Maternal stress in the postpartum period affects not only the mother but also her newborn child, who is at increased risk of developing metabolic and mental disorders later in life. The mechanisms by which stress is transmitted to the infant are not yet fully understood. Human milk (HM) is a potential candidate as maternal stress affects various components of HM, e.

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Discontinuing antidepressant medication (ADM) can be challenging for patients and clinicians. In the current study we investigated if Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) added to supported protocolized discontinuation (SPD) is more effective than SPD alone to help patients discontinue ADM. This study describes a prospective, cluster-randomized controlled trial (completed).

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Glucocorticoids are potent memory modulators that can modify behavior in an adaptive or maladaptive manner. Elevated glucocorticoid levels after learning promote memory consolidation at recent time points, but their effects on remote time points are not well established. Here we set out to assess whether corticosterone (CORT) given after learning modifies remote fear memory.

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Introduction: Effective non-pharmacological treatment options for depression in older adults are lacking.

Objective: The effectiveness of behavioural activation (BA) by mental health nurses (MHNs) for depressed older adults in primary care compared with treatment as usual (TAU) was evaluated.

Methods: In this multicentre cluster-randomised controlled trial, 59 primary care centres (PCCs) were randomised to BA and TAU.

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Background: Persistent fatigue after COVID-19 is common; however, the exact incidence and prognostic factors differ between studies. Evidence suggests that age, female sex, high body mass index, and comorbidities are risk factors for long COVID.

Aim: To investigate the prevalence of persistent fatigue after COVID-19 in patients with a mild infection (managed in primary care) during the first wave of the pandemic and to determine prognostic factors for persistent fatigue.

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The notion of exploiting the regenerative potential of the human brain in physiological aging or neurological diseases represents a particularly attractive alternative to conventional strategies for enhancing or restoring brain function. However, a major first question to address is whether the human brain does possess the ability to regenerate. The existence of human adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN) has been at the center of a fierce scientific debate for many years.

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